IN THE REVIEW

Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870-1914

by Eugen Weber

There are two kinds of history. There is the history which is exclusively about the past, which describes what is dead, and aims to re-create people, issues, and crises in their own terms. There is also the history which is as much about the present as about the past, because …

Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s

by Stanley Hoffmann

The immediate question that the election of the new president of France poses is: what difference will it make? It is important, in answering, to distinguish between the superficial and the deeper results. No country throws out more smoke screens around itself than France. No other country has a history …